"We've struck it, old girl! What I've been looking for all this while. Biggest thing yet, from the looks. We're _rich_, I tell you! Doggone, thundering rich! You watch Parowan go on the map. Biggest thing in the country. If I showed that rock in Goldfield, they'd be down here like flies." He laid the rock down and broke a dry stick across his knee, meaning to start a fire. But he was excited and kept on talking,--now definitely to Luella, now to himself. "It's the kind of thing I've been hunting. I knew it should be here somewhere. This district is entitled to a big mine. It's got all the earmarks. I've got her traced, now. That rock is in place, or I'm a Chinaman. I tell you, old girl, we're rich! I've got a nugget in my shirt pocket that I didn't show you, for fear you might swallow it." "Aw, cut it out!" Luella snapped at him. She was a pessimistic bird, as a rule. Bill burrowed deeper and found more gold. Rock so rich that he could break it up by hand and pan it in the spring, and glean gold enough for another grubstake, more equipment. He was in no great hurry to proclaim his fortune to the world, and he did not mean to show himself in town until his grub was gone. Then he would make a trip, buy more supplies, perhaps hire a man if he could find one whom he could trust. He did not want the harpies to know about Parowan,--yet. He relieved his inner excitement by talking to Luella, and by tootling on the saxophone and dreaming of Doris Hunter, who did not seem quite so unattainable, now that he had found the mine he had wanted to find and was proving it richer than his most lavish expectations. With the first discovery he had put up his location notices on three claims, calling them simply Parowan Number One, Parowan Number Two and Parowan Number Three. And in compliment to the girl of his dreams he had located another, called it the Evening Star and signed Doris Hunter's name as the locator. Which is a chivalrous custom observed quite commonly among prospectors. He did the location work on all four claims, put up the corner and side-line monuments required by law, and then, having eaten most of his supplies, he cached the remainder and started for Goldfield, his mind at ease, his heart singing and his lips wearing an unconscious half-smile all the way. It was in Goldfield, while Bill was in the recorder's office, that the news leaked out where it shouldn't. Luella, like others of her sex, began talking, inspired by an audience of four men, one of whom was Jim Lambert, who had betrayed some curiosity over Bill Dale's affairs when Bill was last in town. "Bill Dale's outfit. Hello, Luella," Jim greeted. Luella looked down at him, seemed to recall having seen him before, and began her pigeon-toed march up and down Wise One's spinal column.